Nearly a Million in Massachusetts Forced to Repay Student Loans

Another COVID-era policy has gone the way of the face mask, social distancing and mandatory vaxxing. The federal government is again targeting those scofflaws who borrowed money for college but have refused to pay it back.

When businesses closed and paychecks dwindled for many during the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Department of Education paused efforts to collect unpaid student loans.

Defaulters, beware; the piper must and will be paid.

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The DOE's Office of Federal Student Aid has resumed collections of its defaulted federal student loan portfolio. "The Department has not collected on defaulted loans since March 2020," according to the DOE.

"Resuming collections protects taxpayers from shouldering the cost of federal student loans that borrowers willingly undertook to finance their postsecondary education," the department said.

"While Congress mandated that student and parent borrowers begin to repay their student loans in October 2023, the Biden-Harris Administration refused to lift the collections pause and kept borrowers in a confusing limbo," the DOE said.

In a statement included on the DEO website, U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon stated,"American taxpayers will no longer be forced to serve as collateral for irresponsible student loan policies."

The DEO reported that 42.7 million borrowers owe more than $1.6 trillion in student loan debt.

"More than five million borrowers have not made a monthly payment in over 360 days and sit in default – many for more than seven years – and four million borrowers are in late-stage delinquency," according to the DOE.

MASSterList.com says, "Hundreds of thousands of borrowers in Massachusetts will be impacted as federal student loan debt collections resume."

"In total, around 13% of Massachusetts residents, over 900,000 residents, have some form of federal student loan debt. And from the data I was looking at, the average student loan debt in Massachusetts is around $35,000," Education Trust Massachusetts State Director Jennie Williamson told MASSterList.

According to Forbes, the Trump Administration says it "can and will take borrowers' wages, pensions and tax refunds" to settle the debt.